Washing my hands of anti-vax Evangelicals
“Don’t let me stop
your great self-destruction.
Die if you want to,
you misguided martyr!
I wash my hands of
your demolition.
DIE if you want to,
you innocent puppet!”
These lines are sung/ screamed by Pilate at Jesus in the
musical “Jesus Christ, Superstar”.
And despite my desire to be compassionate even to people that piss me off, I find myself feeling exactly this way about anti-vax Evangelicals.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not for a moment saying that they
are in ANY way like Jesus. If they were, they would have been the FIRST to do
whatever it took to protect their neighbors from a deadly plague, even if it
meant sacrificing their own freedom or safety or even lives (which it fucking
DOESN’T, but that’s their perception).
But I do feel these words apply to this situation.
It’s like, all the sane people have shouted ourselves hoarse
for a year and a half trying to offer them one chance after another to NOT die.
We’ve tried everything we can think of to offer them a way out, but they don’t want
it. They are going out of their way to get themselves killed.
And it’s increasingly hard to have any sympathy for them.
For decades the social policies they support have demonstrated that they don’t
care about the health or safety or needs or rights of other people. The past five years,
even more so. And throughout the pandemic they’ve gone so far out of their way
to infect people that even zombies would say “Whoa, man, maybe try not to
infect EVERYONE all at once, save some for later” … if zombies could talk. But even the ones that
can only groan “Braaaaaaiiiiins” have, at least, a more logical and articulate
position than the anti-vaxxers do.
They wouldn’t wear a mask because *checks notes* the mask
isn’t 100% effective and therefore must be worthless, or because it’s part
of some liberal plot to strip away everyone’s freedom and individuality. They won’t
take the vaccine because *checks notes* they just don’t fucking wanna, and we
can’t make them. They don’t give a shit if they infect your grandma, or my
grandma, or even their OWN grandma, as long as they get to defiantly wave their
“Don’t Tread On Me” flag to refuse cooperation with something that in NO way involves anyone treading on
them. They’re even claiming fucking RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION when they rightly
lose their jobs for deliberately creating a hazardous workplace.
"I think you've made your point now. You've even gone a little far, to send the message home."
Sooner or later, we have to give up on the idea that they
can BE saved from the self-destructive course they’re so determined to stay on.
Sooner or later, we have to realize they don’t WANT to cut the strings that the
people who manipulate them are using to make puppets out of them… because for
all their screaming about freedom, they’re actually terrified of freedom. They’re
terrified of a world in which they have to figure out the right thing to do by
thinking, and by learning, and by listening to people who know things, rather
than just having some angry male figure (whether their old god Jehovah or their
new god Trump) telling them what to do.
Sooner or later, we have to wash our hands of them, get our
own booster shots, and sit back and watch the poor bastards kill each other off
with their own stubborn refusal to listen to reason. We can’t physically
restrain them from dancing at the edge of the cliff; and unfortunately we can’t
even compel them to not jump over the edge and maybe drag their grandma with
them. Most of them won’t fall to their deaths, of course; and most won’t be
seriously harmed. Most won’t even fall over the edge, and will take that as evidence
that the cliff was never dangerous after all. But far too many have died, far
too many will die, and far too many more will be irreparably harmed. Nevertheless, we can’t
do anything more to warn them of the danger. All we can do now is keep
ourselves, our kids, and our grandmas as far from the edge of the cliff as
possible.
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